In a recent publication (ACS Nano, November 2018, DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.8b07055) we showed that thin titanium dioxide membranes produce negligible photoluminescence background as compared to silicon nitride membranes of same thickness. This discovery permits electrooptical sensing in nanopores with much improved signal-to-background ratio, allowing us to use it for sensing and discrimination among labelled DNA strands as well as polypeptides for the first time.